National Spotlight: Despite sacrificing attendance, midweek football games draw large TV audience
As technology advances and opportunities for broadcasting college football games increases, games on television still garner the largest audiences.
November midweek games typically result in a smaller crowd at CMU, but provide exposure on a national stage. After a one-year hiatus from playing in a November weekday game, Central Michigan football had three November midweek games 2015, including two that were nationally televised.
Mid-American Conference teams have been playing games on Tuesday, Wednesday and occasionally Thursday and Friday at the end of the regular season since 1999. The purpose is to give the conference national exposure it can’t attain when competing against a Saturday football schedule packed with dozens of other larger conference games taking up the TV slots.
CMU’s Tuesday, Nov. 10 game against Toledo on ESPN2 was the most-watched game at Kelly/Shorts Stadium in 2015, with 561,000 people tuned in at any given minute, according to ESPN and Nielsen ratings. Of the four nationally televised CMU games in 2015, only the Quick Lane Bowl had a higher viewership, hitting a 1.48 million mark.
Television ratings are calculated on the average minute audience at any given minute throughout the duration of the broadcast.
Athletics Director Dave Heeke said playing MAC games on television during the week without competition for TV slots has been beneficial for building CMU's brand awareness.
“When you’re on a traditional cable channel, there’s a lot more opportunities for people to view it,” Heeke said. “It has more sizzle.”
ESPN2 broadcasted six midweek MAC games in November 2015, while five other November midweek games were televised on the less ubiquitous ESPNU. The Nov. 3 Northern Illinois-Toledo game drew the most viewers with 856,000 and all six topped the 500,000 mark.
Only one of the ESPNU games topped 200,000 viewers.
ESPN3, which is only available online to viewers with a participating television provider, is becoming a more common option among fans. Yet, even the most-viewed regular season game on ESPN3 — between No. 1 Ohio State and Virginia Tech on Labor Day weekend — reached only 194,000 viewers.
On ESPN, the same game had 10.58 million viewers.
The Toledo game was CMU's only home game in 2015 on ESPN2. The Chippewas were also featured the next week on the road at Kent State on ESPN2, which had 106,000 viewers on ESPNU.
Outside the Thursday season opener against Chattanooga, all 2014 CMU games were on Saturday, forcing the program to compete with the rest of college football for viewership on the weekend.
Getting into midweek slots
Heeke said the MAC typically elevates the most intriguing matchups with the best teams into the midweek slot before the season starts.
With a 19-30 record from 2010 to 2013, CMU football was not the most exciting MAC team to put on TV heading into the 2014 season.
“Those teams that have been more successful are the ones that traditionally have ended up on the weeknight games,” Heeke said. “We had not seen the success previously (to 2014, and) there were some other teams that were rising. Those were more attractive. In the era where we were highly successful, we were regularly on those weeknight games with big games."
The MAC announced Monday that CMU will play in three midweek conference games in 2016. The Chippewas play at Miami (Ohio) on the CBS Sports Network, at home against Ohio on ESPN2 or ESPNU and at Eastern Michigan on ESPNU or ESPN3.
The Eastern Michigan road game — which is the regular season finale — is on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Black Friday games have provided attendance issues in the past. When CMU hosted games on the day after Thanksgiving in 2013 and 2015, the attendance was the lowest of the year and the student crowd was below 300 for both games.
Earning attention in December
Heeke said bowl games are a large part of exposing the country to CMU.
“Bowl season is becoming more like the college basketball tournament and the NCAA Tournament. It’s got that vibe that for a two, three week period, people are pretty tuned in to wanting to watch those games,” Heeke said. “You just couldn’t begin to pay for that kind of exposure for a university.”
All seven MAC bowl games topped 1 million viewers, with the GoDaddy Bowl having the highest at 2.33 million. The Quick Lane Bowl had 1.48 million viewers, approximately 14,000 viewers shy of the inaugural Popeyes Bahamas Bowl.
“(It) started with the viral campaign of the selection, through the uniqueness of a bowl game outside the United States, then to have the game that we had, to have that play — which was pretty fun that day and then for SportsCenter for a couple of days,” Heeke said. “But then (it) went on to be the play of the year and then went on to the ESPYs for the Play of the Year. That’s almost like a full year of constant exposure about Central Michigan.”
Filling the stadium
While midweek games allow for a larger national audience, it can pose a challenge for attracting fans into the stadium. For Chippewa fans from outside the Mount Pleasant area, a Tuesday or Wednesday night game is less feasible to attend than a Saturday afternoon game.
While the student section does not take as large of a hit as the overall attendance, many students still cite homework and early classes the next day as reasons for staying in. Kelly/Shorts Stadium had an average of 2,906 students in the three weekend games in 2015 and 2,560 students in the three weekday games — including 2,268 students at the Toledo game.
The overall attendance for the midweek Toledo game was 12,429, well below the 15,066 average in 2015 according to CMU's 2015 Paid Football Attendance Summary. The game ranked fifth out of the six home games in total attendance and fourth in terms of the student crowd.
Macomb freshman Madison McNamara, who is part of the CMU Color Guard, said she was unhappy with the Tuesday night game this season. One out of 10 students surveyed preferred Tuesday night games to Saturday games.
“They don’t end until like 12 at night and then you have class the next day," she said. “I definitely think they should be on a Friday night or a weekend night.”
Students said the top factors in deciding to go to a game is if their friends are going.
Detroit senior Dan Robinson said he and his roommate will stay in and watch the game in the case of poor weather conditions.
“If the cold weather is ever overbearing, we will just go get food, we’ll pull it up on the laptop, plug the HDMI in and we’ll watch it at home,” Robinson said.
While some students are unaware of ESPN3, others use it to watch home and away CMU football games.
Heeke said convincing fans to watch in person instead of online is an issue that spans all of college football, from the MAC to the SEC.
“It is the dilemma that you’re faced with (on) how that impacts your crowd, how that impacts your loyal fan base,” Heeke said. “But at the same time, we’re trying to grow programs, help recruiting, bring national exposure to the university. For potential students, that can be an introduction to the university.”
A number of factors go into the lower attendance, from the date and time of the game to the ease of viewing to the 32 degree low temperature that evening.
For Heeke, it’s not a binary of picking television viewers over filling the stadium — or vice versa.
“I want full stadiums and I want to be on TV,” Heeke said. “Why can’t we do both?”
Staff Reporter Evan Sasiela contributed to this story.
